1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to golf ball dispensers.
2. Prior Art
A golfer practicing driving or putting typically must bend over to pick up a ball from a bucket nearby, place it on the ground, and get back up into a swinging position. Over the course of a practice session, this tedious process must be repeated dozens or hundreds of times.
Various golf ball dispensers are disclosed in the prior art for eliminating the need to bend over and position the ball manually. A dispenser disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,624,325 to Smith is comprised of a funnel for directing balls onto a sloped track. A hinged arm at the lower end of the track is pivoted to a lowered position by a golf club for directing a ball down along the arm and onto a tee. However, the balls do not reliably feed from the funnel because they sometimes tend to get stuck at the bottom of the funnel. When the balls are almost as large as the bottom opening of a funnel, they tend to get stuck easily. Similar devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,549,518 to Wang and U.S. Pat. No. 3,599,983 to Melton. A dispenser disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,614 to Tange is comprised of a tall housing with a zigzag course for the balls. The balls must be fed into the housing one at a time. The housing is inconveniently tall. A device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,171,299 to Beckett is comprised of a housing with a spiral track for feeding balls to a hinged arm. Although very wide, the spiral track can only hold a relatively small number of balls in single layer.
All prior art golf ball dispensers are too large and oddly shaped to be easily carried around a golf course. They either do not feed the balls reliably, or require the balls to be fed into a magazine one at a time.